Bruno Tassone’s Invisible Legacy

Stu Hamilton, Vic Neimela, Bruno Tassone, Gord Tofte, and Lynne Campo at Bruno’s Retirement Lunch … this small group has over 178 years of hydrometric program management experience spanning more than half a century.

I recently had the pleasure of joining my colleagues, young and old, to congratulate Bruno Tassone on his retirement after 35 years of service to the Water Survey of Canada. Had Bruno been a structural engineer, we would have been able to point to a legacy of concrete and steel.

Instead, Bruno’s legacy is concealed and the true value of it will only be revealed gradually and imperceptibly.

Bruno became manager of hydrometric operations in the Pacific and Yukon Region at the worst of times. In the mid-nineties a massive government deficit reduction initiative hit the program and Bruno had to preside over restructuring, network reduction, office closures, and layoffs.

If he were simply a cold-hearted accountant these reductions would have been guided only by the cost reduction ethic. However, as the engineer responsible for Canada’s water data legacy every cut had to be carefully conceived in terms of minimizing the impact on water resource decisions into the future. It is thanks to Bruno’s skillful manipulation of available resources during this time that Canadians have continuity of record from sentinel gauges that are recording an unprecedented change in hydrology resulting from the loss of glaciers in the Pacific Coastal and Cordilleran region.

The hydrometric network survived and the deficit reduction mantra was gradually replaced by bureaucratic inflation. Every financial, contracting, and human resources decision had to be negotiated through a complex matrix of authorizations, policies, and procedures. At its best, this matrix was arcane but was otherwise adverse, unnecessary, or self-defeating. It was always inefficient and frustrating.

In the context of this bizarre bureaucratic matrix, and against great odds, Bruno managed to engineer an almost complete workforce renewal – replacing the baby boomer cohort with talented, enthusiastic, and well-trained new recruits. At the same time he engineered a complete technological renewal by modernizing the entire network as well as extensive major capital renovation – replacing aging infrastructure to meet modern occupational safety standards.

One thing that Bruno was unwilling to compromise on was data integrity.

In the face of financial, human, and material resources pressures one of the easiest cheats is data quality. Quality of record and standards compliance are not metrics that are easy to measure or that bean-counters care about. It is easy to save money (something that the bean-counters care a great deal about!) by reducing the number of gaugings. The program could not afford any more field trips than necessary, but Bruno was unwilling to accept any fewer than absolutely necessary.

To sum up: there are an unknown number of stations that are providing continuous record from otherwise ungauged landscapes than there would have been. There are an unknowable number of gaps in this record that have been prevented. There has been no perceptible loss of data quality in spite of an abundance of reasons to compromise quality to save costs.

One might say that none of this matters. Decisions about water resources are made no matter how relevant, reliable, and trustworthy the data. The only thing that changes is the likelihood that those decisions are actually going to turn out as expected, or not.

Good data result in investments that return good value.

Natural disasters are not caused by nature. Disasters occur because plans and designs do not adequately anticipate, or understand, natural variability.

The unspent cost of every future disaster that is avoided or mitigated is due to adequate hydrometric data is part of Bruno’s legacy. No one will ever be able to calculate the future value of this legacy, but we can anticipate that it will grow forever.

Tomorrow our country celebrates…

Happy Canada Day!

5 responses to “Bruno Tassone’s Invisible Legacy”

Knowing Bruno personally, I can’t believe he’s retired. Good data has always carried the day.. you cannot make good policy decisions on made up data.. .we’ve recently seen this- and the net cost of reversing bad policy (once caught) is painful and costly in terms of political, professional and financial costs.
In the hydrogeology world- Bruno is a living legend- now I know why!
thank you!

Thanks for bringing up the link between data and policy. Policies that are evidence-driven are naturally resilient. If data indicate that the evidence has become stale-dated then policy can adapt and change accordingly. Data are telling us that many assumptions about natural variability that we previously trusted as a basis for good governance are not true. It is not only possible, but absolutely necessary, for governance to be adaptive in the face of change.

Data are therefore very threatening to politicians who are guided solely by party doctrine. Evidence that is contrary to doctrine invalidates their very Raison D’être. Ultimately, the future of funding for basic data collection comes down to the democratic choice between politicians who have all of the answers versus politicians who are uncertain about the future. It isn’t a fair fight, for all of the wrong reasons.

The frequency of natural disasters due to climate variability/change is giving an opportunity to hydrologists to advance their demands for adequate funding in the collection and collation of hydrometric data. Because such information is often of value for future developments, politicians and decision makers do not see the value of investing in the collection of hydrometric data. It is time for us in the field of hydrology to take the center stage and convince politicians on the value of these data sets especially in our developing countries were forward planning is rare.

I am especially pleased to read your comment. There is urgency for advancing the pace of economic development throughout Africa and most development opportunities are either propelled by – or limited by – water issues. There is no doubt in my mind that any improvements in economic prosperity will not be sustainable unless the water issues are well managed. Notwithstanding the caveats in my response to Kevin, there is also no doubt in my mind that your understanding of the problems and opportunities will lead to good outcomes. You will most certainly create a legacy of your own that will be of great value for generations to come.

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Water News

This blog post is a fantastic insight into the minds of the most influential hydrologists in the world today. The question: “WHAT BOOK OR PAPER HAS BEEN MOST INFLUENTIAL TO YOUR CAREER AND WHY?” was posed to senior hydrologists all over the world and the answers run from the predictable (Groundwater by Freeze and Cherry), the unexpected (House at Pooh Corner), classic (The Method of Multiple Working Hypotheses), eclectic (Slowness) to difficult (Scale of Fluctuation of Rainfall Models). Out of this broad range of influential reading, it is the explanation of why a particular body of work made a difference in a career path that is most illuminating. I particularly like the quote provided by Gregory Pastenack: “Show me a person who has read a thousand books and I’ll show you my best friend; show me a person who has read but one and I will show you my worst enemy.” Happy reading. – Stu Hamilton

The intent of this paper is to develop a system of diverse observation systems for the purpose of ground-truthing satellite observation systems. The challenge is that while it is possible to develop methods to identify incorrect data, the residue is not necessarily all correct data. Confidence in the data has to come from attributes such as whether the data source is well documented, well understood, representative, updated, publicly available, and maintains rich metadata. If broadly adopted, the system-of-systems approach will have potential benefits in guiding users to the most appropriate set of observations for their needs and in highlighting to network owners and operators areas for potential improvement. – Stu Hamilton

Murky Waters: Taking a Snapshot of Freshwater Sustainability in BC

This statement: “There’s a huge opportunity here to improve data collection, monitoring, and reporting. Reliable data would help governments, funders, and non-profits to track progress, make better decisions, and coordinate their efforts” is from Jack Wong, the CEO of the Real Estate Foundation of BC. The recommendations of this study include: “Regular public opinion surveys on freshwater attitudes (…) conducted by a cross-section of water partners to ensure long-term availability of the data”; “A multi-faceted solution (…) involving diverse groups that gather water data to increase the quantity and quality of data and improve data accessibility”; “This report shows a huge opportunity to convene relevant players and discuss solutions for freshwater sustainability data collection, monitoring, and reporting. If successfully implemented, communities across the province will be more informed and better stewards of BC’s most precious resource.” – Stu Hamilton

Attribution of cause to effect in natural environments is a difficult problem. It is one thing to be able to use monitoring data to say what is happening. It is much more challenging to say why it is happening. While difficult, attribution is important. Without compelling attribution, there are deeply entrenched reasons to stay the course and not make the changes necessary to achieve better outcomes. I am interested to know if the relatively simple method used in this paper for attribution of cause to extreme temperatures could be applied for other types of data. For example, wouldn’t it be good to have compelling attribution of cause for harmful algal blooms? – Stu Hamilton

This report makes a compelling argument about how looking after water is in the best strategic interests of the United States. It is better to anticipate predictable problems and take relatively inexpensive actions (e.g. wise use of data to influence proactive measures) to avoid or mitigate challenges to human health and economic development, both of which must be managed to ensure peace and security. – Stu Hamilton

Print this article and put it on the desk of the senior administrators in your water monitoring agency. The arguments made here that climate observation networks offer a magnified return on investment all hold true for water monitoring as well. “Climate change is but one example of the need to make decisions under deep uncertainty. Developing new approaches to decision making that go beyond traditional point and probabilistic predictions is the focus of a new scientific undertaking. Developing adaptation pathways that will be robust under many possible futures will in part require observing systems that are designed with these needs in mind.” “The economic value of such a system at ~ $10 trillion dollars to the world economy in today’s value (known as “net present value” in economics using a 3% discount rate). In the simplest sense, this is the economic value of moving climate scientific understanding forward 15 to 20 years by using better observations, analysis, and modeling capabilities. The studies further estimated that if the world tripled its current economic investments in climate research (observations, analysis, modeling) to achieve such an advanced observing system, the return on investment would be ~ $50 for every $1 invested by society.”

The average global temperature from January to September 2017 was approximately 1.1°C above the pre-industrial era. The years of 2013-2017 are set to be the warmest five-year period on record. The past three years have all been in the top three years in terms of temperature records. The WMO statement is based on five independently maintained global temperature data sets. The rate of increase in CO2 from 2015 to 2016 was the highest on record, 3.3 parts per million/year, reaching 403.3 parts per million. – Stu Hamilton

This paper affirms the central theme of my whitepaper “Improving Outcomes for Freshwater Availability, Security and Sustainability: Water Data Asset Management as a Strategic Investment.” The key to good governance is well-informed stakeholders. Water monitoring best serves public interests when data is managed as a strategic asset. – Stu Hamilton

I like this blog post for how it explains catchment processes as a lead-in to explaining the value of isotope hydrology. I think this approach is a good one for anyone in monitoring to remember when explaining what we do and why we do it. Start with the why and end with the what. – Stu Hamilton

An integrated database of data from 51,101 lakes in the northeast United States has been developed to assist with the problems arising from too many disperse and limited data sources. Three decades of data can now be discovered in its location and context (i.e. land use, geologic, climatic, and hydrologic settings). The database contains 150,000 measures of total phosphorus, 200,000 measures of chlorophyll, and 900,000 measures of Secchi depth. – Stu Hamilton